Due to the vast and increasing amount of traffic generated by users on the Internet, businesses continue to seek more effective means to advertise their goods and services online. In recent years, the online advertising environment has evolved to generally include five primary participants: “advertisers,” “first party publishers,” “ad servers,” “audience intelligence providers,” and “ad exchanges.”
An “advertiser” is generally a merchant of goods and/or services willing to pay to have its ads presented to users online. A “first party publisher,” or simply “publisher,” generally refers to the owner and operator of one or more content websites having advertising space (e.g., “banners”) available for “lease” by advertisers. An “ad server” maintains an inventory of ads (e.g., on one or more servers) associated with various advertisers, and delivers the ads to publishers' websites on a user browser in response to a trigger, such as a request from a publisher webpage being loaded with a user browser. An “ad exchange,” or similarly an “ad network,” essentially acts as an ad broker, matching the publishers' available advertising space with ads based on a variety of criteria, such as user information, bidding information, budget information, ad campaign information, or other criteria. An “audience intelligence provider,” or “data provider,” generally refers to a party that gathers information about users, such as demographic information, preferences, interests, etc., for use by the ad exchanges and/or ad networks in the process of selecting and serving a particular ad to a particular user. For example, websites affiliated with the ad networks and/or ad exchanges may gather information about users as they interact with the websites, and provide the gathered information to the ad networks and/or ad exchanges for use in the ad selection process. In addition, data providers may even gather information about users in offline environments, such as from paper transactions (e.g., a mortgage application), and provide the user information to ad exchanges and/or ad networks for use in online advertising.
Generally speaking, advertisers are willing to pay for three types user interactions with an ad: an “impression,” a “click,” and a “conversion.” An “impression” refers to an instance of an ad being selected and served to a user on the website of a publisher. A “click” refers to an instance of a user actually clicking on or otherwise selecting an advertisement. A “conversion” refers to an instance of the user following through on the ad, such as by making a purchase, enrolling in a program, providing certain information, etc. Advertisers are generally willing to pay more per conversion than per click, and more per click than per impression.
In an effort to spend their online advertising budgets on those users who will most likely be interested in their ads, advertisers develop “ad campaigns” or marketing plans that identify certain types of users as targets for given products or services. In other cases, advertisers may be unsure of what types of users are most likely to respond to a given product and/or ad, and may wish to gather specific information about the users viewing various types of websites and responding to their ads. The advertisers may then develop a targeted ad campaign or marketing strategy (e.g., for a particular good and/or service) based on the gathered information. For example, an ad campaign relating to a new video game may target males ages 13-21 browsing certain game-related websites during a period surrounding the release of the game. The ad campaign may further specify budgeting information, such as prices the advertiser is willing to pay per impression, click, and conversion.
When a user visits the webpage of a publisher, the instance of the publisher webpage executing in the user's browser generates a request for ads to fill any available ad space on the page. The ad networks and/or ad exchanges facilitate “bids” on the available ad space, based on information contained in the request, such as pricing information, ad type information, a unique identifier associated with the user, etc., and on ad campaign information. If the bid of a particular advertiser is accepted, the ad network and/or ad exchange select and serve a targeted ad associated with the winning advertiser for display on the user's browser.
Implementing targeted ad campaigns requires the audience intelligence providers to gather and process information about users, which is known as “profiling.” One way intelligence providers gather user information is by tracking users as they surf the Internet using “cookies.” Generally, a cookie is a small piece of data placed on the user's browser when the user visits a website belonging to an ad network. The cookie usually contains, among other things, a unique identifier associated with the user. Depending on the practices of the ad network, the cookie may contain other information, such as date and time information, an estimated zip code of the user, and browser history information. The cookie is stored for a specified time and returned whenever the user subsequently visits that website or another website in the ad network. By compiling and analyzing cookie information associated with a particular user gathered across multiple websites, a “user profile” indicating various attributes, preferences, and/or interests of the user can be built. This profile may then be used by ad networks and/or ad exchanges to support targeted ad campaigns. Of course, other user tracking methods may be used by intelligence providers to gather information about users and build user profiles.
Recent improvements in data correlation techniques have allowed third parties such as data brokers and other audience intelligence providers to link multiple user profiles together, and even discover real-world user identity information. As a result, sensitive information about an individual may be discovered and misused. Many users are unaware that personal data is being collected off of their device and sold to third parties. Some people find such user tracking and profiling methods employed by online advertisers to be intrusive or invasive, but find opting out to be difficult.
Embodiments of the current disclosure may alleviate the problems discussed above and/or other problems in the art. The scope of the current disclosure, however, is defined by the attached claims, and not by the ability to solve any specific problem.